In my own experience having debates and discussions in this day and age, there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point. This isn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it does mean people are offloading reasoning about a problem to letting some citation’s abstract make the point for them. There is a massive replicability crisis in academia and we know that the publish or perish culture means null results put careers into jeopardy. It is also heavily biased towards studying things that can be measured empirically.
So, here is my example, up until the mid 90’s it was widely believed in the medical community that babies could not feel pain. Anyone who has ever spent time around newborns knows that these little humans can indeed feel pain. Yet somehow, secular men of science came to the conclusion that no, they could not, and what we thought were pain responses were just reflexes. Besides, the infant wouldn’t remember it. They would perform surgeries without anesthesia on babies up to a year old.
Part of the problem as to why this profoundly wrong notion held on for so long was that there really wasn’t a good way to quantify infant pain. Eventually some researchers finally got around to devising some kind of measurement and the science eventually came around. But for a good part of the 20th century an incredible amount of pain was inflicted because a scientific notion couldn’t be refuted by a non-scientific argument (of course that baby feels pain, just look at him).
This isn’t a scathing indictment of secular values, but rather, a cautionary tale. Not everything needs to be proven via peer-reviewed papers. A lot of the human experience can still be asserted and known using unscientific or pre-scientific reasoning.
How is your example specific to secular values? I'm sure there are many doctors who are religious.
> there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point
Yes. That's to prevent people from making false assertions. I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.
>” I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.”
I never said people shouldn’t need facts to back up their statements. I am trying to say that there are other ways to make assertions without having to cite peer reviewed studies.
And, that when people get stuck in a mindset of dismissing any idea that doesn’t have a citation to justify it, when subjects come up that aren’t easily studied empirically you end up with a blind spot. In my example the blind spot was infant pain. In my mind, any rational person would look at a crying baby and come to the conclusion that the little baby feels pain. But, if you demanded I bring a fact to back that assertion up, for the longest time I couldn’t provide you with one.
Yet again, your complaint about people asking for citations for doubtful claims doesn't seem to have any relation to secularism or its lack thereof. You might want to reconsider whether you are forcefully bringing religion into things where it doesn't belong just to make an argument against secularism for the sake of it.
Intuition can be secular. It is possible to conclude that the crying baby is feeling pain, or make many other types of hypotheses, without providing citations or using a religious framework.
That's too strict of a definition, in my opinion, and I don't understand how conditioning is related to the crying baby example. Intuition can produce incorrect judgments and doesn't need the person to be clueless. Here's a dictionary definition:
> (knowledge from) an ability to understand or know something immediately based on your feelings rather than facts
I view the emphasis on the scientific method and empiricism as the legitimate means of determining truth to be a major component of secular values. And for what it’s worth it’s a really valuable mindset for most real world phenomena, but not all.
I know plenty of religious people also like the scientific method and empiricism, but probably only as much as where it won’t conflict with their beliefs. I’m sure a pious doctor would easily dismiss a paper refuting the efficacy of prayer. So to me, at least, this kind of scientific worldview is not really a feature of religious thinking, but the two can coexist up to a point.
So, here is my example, up until the mid 90’s it was widely believed in the medical community that babies could not feel pain. Anyone who has ever spent time around newborns knows that these little humans can indeed feel pain. Yet somehow, secular men of science came to the conclusion that no, they could not, and what we thought were pain responses were just reflexes. Besides, the infant wouldn’t remember it. They would perform surgeries without anesthesia on babies up to a year old.
Part of the problem as to why this profoundly wrong notion held on for so long was that there really wasn’t a good way to quantify infant pain. Eventually some researchers finally got around to devising some kind of measurement and the science eventually came around. But for a good part of the 20th century an incredible amount of pain was inflicted because a scientific notion couldn’t be refuted by a non-scientific argument (of course that baby feels pain, just look at him).
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3523036
This isn’t a scathing indictment of secular values, but rather, a cautionary tale. Not everything needs to be proven via peer-reviewed papers. A lot of the human experience can still be asserted and known using unscientific or pre-scientific reasoning.